On this historic day, while still under a soft grip from Jack Frost, in the state of Colorado the production and sale of marijuana becomes completely legal, for the first time in US history. In some respects, it is a welcomed event. I will address the reasons behind this to my neighbors on the US side of the US-Mexico border in order to make it clear.
In the past, it was easy to blame the Mexicans living on the other side of the US border for “drugging and corrupting our precious American youth”. But with grass being legally grown and sold for consumption in Colorado, who are Americans and the US news media going to blame now? The bogey man?
Patricia “Pat” Russo, acting as spokewoman for Partnership for a Drug-Free America, expressed her strong disappointment and disapproval to marijuana being completely legalized in Colorado. However, this woman has got to be one of the best examples of hypocrisy in the whole USA. It has been acknowledged by many scientific studies and validated statistics that tobacco itself is one of the most addictive substances legally available on the market today, a “legal” drug that claims millions of deaths worldwide (mostly by lung cancer and emphysema) and is considered by some to be even more addictive than heroin itself, making tobacco a habit even harder to kick. These facts are well documented and known to most. Half a century after the Luther Terry report, smoking tobacco remains the main preventable cause of deaths in the USA.) Yet, her organization has never made any significant stride for the banning of tobacco. In contrast, it is hard to find a single documented case of a death directly attributable to the smoking of marijuana (this in spite of the cold hard fact that tens of millions of Americans including US Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack himself have tried marijuana with no long term ill effects). Why the suspicious selectivity of “Pat” Russo and her organization? Did she and the organization she heads sold out to the interests of the powerful US tobacco companies and their lobbyists in Washington? Besides tobacco, there is another “legal” drug that has also claimed tens of thousands of lives, as organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous can attest. Partnership for a Drug Free America, the obvious lovechild of the long defunct American Temperance Society and the right-wing conservative groups of America, is not making any attempts to send the USA back to the disastrous a Prohibition Era which with the banning of alcoholic beverages that fostered rampant corruption and criminal organizations headed by “distinguished” American citizens of the likes of hoodlums such as Al Capone and and Bugs Moran. At least in this respect, the American society learned its lesson well.
Ironically, the first official study condemning tobacco as a major health threat, the Luther Terry report, made public on january 11th 1964, had its almost half a century anniversary celebrated just ten days after the day of legalization of marijuana in Colorado, and this in turn just three days after another historic anniversary, january 8th 1964, the day in which President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed a much more worthwhile war, the War on Poverty, a war still being waged after half a century and for which a reallocation of the funds currently being squandered on the pitiful war on drugs would be most welcome. To his demerit, President Johnson entrenched the USA in another bloody war that was also lost: the Vietnam war; leaving a long-lasting scar in the American psyche that has not yet healed.
The Mexican “war on drugs” carried out by President Felipe Calderón was never a priority for the ordinary Mexican on the street, it was (and still is) a US war on drugs proclaimed at first by US President Richard Nixon that started up with the so-called “Operation Intercept” (a forerunner of the current quasi-blockade being implemented by US customs on the border with Mexico) and climaxed with the creation of the DEA. It is the US War on Drugs that the US federal government chose not to carry inside US soil but rather outside in order to keep the anticipated violence also outside the USA, and was set officially in motion in Mexican soil with the Merida Initiative. The price tag for Mexico during the reign of Felipe Calderon was an estimated 75 thousand dead and close to 25 thousand desaparecidos (vanished, presumed executed and buried on clandestine cemeteries). What do we tell now to the widows and orphans left by that US war on drugs carried out in Mexican soil? Besides the price tag in human lives, the economic devastation left in Mexico by the war on drugs was enormous, Ciudad Juarez which was once a prosperous and thriving economy was devastated and left in ruins, turned into what came to be known as the most violent city in the entire globe. And what did Mexico get from the US government for this enormous sacrifice? Did it get any special considerations regarding the immigration issue? No. Did it get any kind of privilege regarding commerce and trade? No. Even more gruesome, the US economic contribution to the Merida Initiative does not even begin to cover at least one tenth of one per cent of the enormous damage inflicted on the Mexican economy by all the violence, the deceased, the orphaned children and the loss of foreign investments which never materialized. And all for what, now that Colorado has legalized marijuana?
But it gets even better. What do we tell now to the many hardworking US Customs officers entrusted with stopping the flow of one percent of all the illegal drugs that enter annually into the USA? That all their work in all these years logging big seizures of marijuana was all for naught? They can continue seizing marijuana loads entering into the USA both from Canada and Mexico, but with grass being legally grown and sold in Colorado, the only purpose of such seizures would be to discourage competition, not drug addiction.
The US media is quite prone to giving big headlines to the detention of prominent drug lords in Mexico and Colombia. But the same cannot be said of the USA itself. The DEA has never detained inside the USA a drug lord who can be considered as mighty as Colombian Pablo Escobar, Mexican Rafael Caro Quintero, Colombian Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Mexican Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. As a matter of fact, the only important drug lords currently serving time in US prisons are those who have been deported to the USA from countries such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico. In this respect, Mexico and Colombia have always gotten a bad rap in the US media and even in Hollywood for their drug lords and drug cartels, but the USA itself is always portrayed as truly righteous and just, incorruptible. And inside the USA itself, who are the ones who run the vast distribution network of illegal drugs that all but guarantees that everyone in the USA (in any city, in any state, regardless of the size of its population) with the right amount of cash in his/her pocket can buy any kind of drug? Does this vast network run all by itself with no one in charge? Better let the handsomely paid DEA agents and officials answer that. And better still, let them give their answer to these questions to the American public. They’re listening.
If a junkie wants to shoot himself with a daily dose of coke without seeking medical help to cure his addiction, that’s his decision, that’s his choice, that’s his problem, no one is putting a gun to his head forcing him to ruin his life. That’s what free choice is all about, and this privilege was given to Man by God himself ever since Adam roamed in paradise before being kicked out. What is wholly unacceptable is that, in order to keep the junkie from ruining his life, honest police officers have to fall in the line of duty leaving behind orphaned children, politicians become corrupted and an entire legal system is brought down to shambles. If the junkie wants to commit suicide, why not simply let him do it in his pitiful solitude instead of allowing him to pull others with him down the drain? If it’s all about saving lives, then this should be a no-brainer. Tragic? Yes, undoubtedly. But that’s his choice. At least in this respect, the Colorado authorities are on the right track and have finally come back to their senses.
The freewheeling behavior of that “precious American youth” for which other countries have unjustly taken the blame has claimed the lives of famous celebrities such as Cory Monteith, Andy Gibb, River Phoenix and Heath Ledger, and destroyed countless others such as Jan-Michael Vincent, Ryan O’Neal and his son, just to name a few, but these rascals with a lot of money to spend never did appreciate the benefits of having been born by sheer accident in a land of plenty amid a world rife with so much want and poverty; they never did learn anything in Church. Acting as spoiled brats, they ended up being their own executioners, and the worst of it is that their example has not been assimilated by others like them (such as trend setting Disney princesses Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus a.k.a. Hannah Montana, and Britney Spears), but it was their choice to play Russian roulette with total disregard to the corruption, deaths and violence their snorting habits generated in other countries. The drug issue hides the true main point underlining everything: whether a person will be allowed commit suicide legally or illegally. Instead of hard drugs, an old-fashioned noose might do just as well, except quicker and with less pain, which is more humane if they’re going to do it anyway. Why should Mexicans (and Colombians, and many others) keep on dying on account of their rampant behavior? Why should other countries bear the brunt and keep on paying the high price due in part to the failure of the US education system and those US parents whose equally dismal failure has turned the USA into the greatest consumer of hard drugs in the planet? At least the Colorado initiative will take some steam off the rest of the world over the marijuana consumption in the USA issue by putting it right were it belongs, in the very own backyard of the very own home of the end consumer himself.
The ordinary Mexican on the street is more than fed up with this crazy war on drugs, and in 2012 the population had the chance to cast an avalanche of ballots of resentment against the ruling party of Felipe Calderon which lost the Presidency for the first time in history and even ending up in third place in the ballots, returning the formerly despised PRI party to power. It may be added that according to newly released statistics, at the end of 2013 (one year after Felipe Calderón and his cronies of the Partido Accion Nacional had left office after losing the Presidency), the murder rates of Ciudad Juárez for 2013 had been the lowest of the previous six years. President Enrique Peña Nieto is beginning to tone down the battle drums and is subtly conveying the message that the continuance of the Mexican version of the US war on drugs will not be his top priority, a change in attitude being taken with a sigh of relief although much to the chagrin of the DEA and the FBI. It may be added that the unprecedented surveillance and espionage being carried out against every US citizen by a National Security Agency running amuck and out of control (not even the Russians during the Stalinist era were so closely watched and monitored) did not contribute in making even a small dent in the drug trade. Perhaps the US war on drugs is not a priority for the NSA either? We’ll simply let the spokesmen of the US federal government answer this directly to the people to whom it is accountable: the US citizens who are being spied upon 24/7. Anyone listening?
Experiments on a grand scale such as the one being conducted in Colorado are the most clear cut recognition that the war on drugs has been a big fiasco, and the billions upon billions of dollars thrown into it have been a dumb waste (dumber than dumb would be a more appropriate expression) of taxpayers money, not to say the many lives than have been lost in the enforcement of a bona fide failure. In the long run, perhaps what worries most of the people who work for the DEA is that, if eventually all the so-called illegal drugs become legal (of course, with some restrictions applied, such as forbidding their sale to minors), then what is the purpose of an agency as expensive as the DEA? Keep in mind that the DEA is a fairly recent concoction, it did not even exist when World War II was being fought. It was not needed then, and in view of the results obtained so far, there are many who believe it is not needed now. If the DEA ever becomes a superfluous outfit after the continuing legalization of drugs in the USA, having outlived its usefulness and no-longer needed, then its disappearance from the federal budget would be in order especially with a national debt running in the trillions of dollars; and in turn this would mean the permanent loss of many well-paying jobs in the federal government, not an easy thing to chew for the many who have gotten used to this way of living that comes with many privileges. Ironically, if the war on drugs had instead been a success, with zero illegal drugs being sold in the USA, then an agency as expensive and big as the DEA would no longer be warranted. Awkwardly, it has been in the best interest for the survival of the DEA itself that illegal drugs keep on flowing into the USA, for if that flow were ever to stop completely all of the sudden, the DEA would be out of business having lost its raison d’etre, it’s that simple.
It is precisely for the reasons given above that we can all expect the DEA will put up a fight resorting to all of its resources in order to force Colorado to revert its legalization of marijuana. The DEA, in effect, is becoming -funded with taxpayers money- the modern version of the American Temperance Society, in conjunction with organizations such as Partnership for a Drug Free America. From the perspective of the DEA, it is not a matter of religious beliefs, it is not a matter of morality either, it is all a matter of good paying jobs, it is all a matter of defending a very hefty budget at a time when there is an ax in Washington seeking ways to reduce the burgeoning federal deficit.
On a positive note, the legalization in the USA of all the so-called illegal drugs, if it comes to pass, could be a boon for the overwhelmed US prison system, considering that since 2002 the USA already has the highest incarceration rate in the world and most of the charges are drug-related (the U.S. prison population is more than 2.4 million, having more than quadrupled since 1980, and the single largest driver in the increase in the federal prison population belogns to drug offenders.)
No amount of law enforcement, no amount of punishment meted out to drug pushers and drug addicts, will make a dent in the consumption of illegal drugs in North America, since the failed law-enforcement approach ignores that this issue, more than being a criminal issue, should be considered instead as a public health issue. Furthermore, if an hedonistic pleasure-seeking society is bent on traveling the same path as the Romans did during their decadence, perhaps this is part of an historical cycle that cannot be reverted regardless of who is in power, regardless of who is the President of the USA and regardless of how smart the US Congress could become after its worldwide shameful display of dysfunctionality and irresponsible fiscal behavior.
The legalization of marijuana in the state of Colorado comes just a few weeks after a Latin American country, Uruguay, has also adopted overwhelmingly the legalization of marijuana. With marijuana becoming legal in the northern side, and becoming legal in the southern side, it will become increasingly difficult for the Mexican government to hold on to its part of the now grossly obsolete Merida Initiative, especially if holding steadfastly to a foreign anti-drug policy keeps on coming at the cost of thousands of Mexican lives. More and more Mexicans are adopting the stance that the US war on drugs should be fought on US soil, not on Mexican soil, or at the very least if it should be fought on Mexican soil only if it is also fought on US soil on equal terms, with the USA contributing from now on with its own quota of tens of thousands of homicides related to organized crime, and rampant violence pouring out into the streets just as it has happened in Mexico. Otherwise, Mexico should detach itself completely from the worthless crumbs handed over by the Merida Initiative, turning instead to more productive and profitable endeavors such as increasing trade and commerce with China which, according to recent trends, will soon be the new world superpower, surpassing the USA. At the very least, every Mexican is certain that China will never try to impose upon Mexico its own public policies such as the USA did. Which makes it turning over to China and forgetting about the anti-immigrants neighbor to its North more enticing, a bad neighbor now more interested in building border walls and fences than in building international bridges.
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